A most indisputable truth, and a heartfelt one in the present instance.

To augment the quantity, to improve the quality, in this thrice-essential particular: here lay the keystone and crowning summit of all Friedrich Wilhelm's endeavors; to which he devoted himself, as only the best Spartan could have done.

Of which there will be other opportunities to speak in detail.

For it was a thing world-notable; world-laughable, as was then thought; the extremely serious fruit of which did at length also become notable enough.
In the Malplaquet time, once on some occasion, it is said, two English Officers, not well informed upon the matter, and provoking enough in their contemptuous ignorance, were reasoning with one another in Friedrich Wilhelm's hearing, as to the warlike powers of the Prussian State, and Whether the King of Prussia could on his own strength maintain a standing army of 15,000?
Without subsidies, do you think, so many as 15,000?
Friedrich Wilhelm, incensed at the thing and at the tone, is reported to have said with heat: "Yes, 30,000!" [Forster, i.
138.] whereat the military men slightly wagged their heads, letting the matter drop for the present.

But he makes it good by degrees; twofold or threefold;--and will have an army of from seventy to a hundred thousand before he dies, ["72,000 field-troops, 30,000 garrison-troops" (_Gestandnisse eines OEster reichischen Veterans,_ Breslau, 1788, i.
64).] the best-drilled of fighting men; and what adds much to the wonder, a full Treasury withal.